Shiur provided courtesy of Naaleh.com
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
When Mordechai Hatzadik established the holiday of Purim, he mandated it be established as yemai simchah/days of joy, a designation mandated only for Purim and not for other holidays. [We are commanded to be joyous on our holidays, but the days themselves are not designated as days of joy. CKS] What is the special joy of Purim and how does the mitzvah of the special festive meal of Purim contribute to this simchah?
The Mishnah tells us that the two happiest days of the year are Tu B’Av and Yom Kippur, Yom Kippurim. Rabbi Friedlander zt”l, the Sifsei Chaim, citing the Ariz”l, reminds us that Yom Kippur is actually a yom k’Purim, a day like Purim. It appears from the phrasing that Purim is even greater than the Day of Atonement. As some sages therefore contend, a negative decree that has not been revoked on Yom Kippur can still be revoked as late as Purim. Both days achieve atonement. On Yom Kippur, we do teshuvah from fear, but our return to Hashem on Purim is from our love for Hashem.
When Moshe Rabbenu came down from Sinai with the luchot, seeing Bnei Yisroel sinning with the golden calf, he smashed the luchot. It was on Yom Kippur that Moshe Rabbenu came down with the second set of luchot and Hashem’s forgiveness. When we had accepted the Torah on Shavuot, there was an element of coercion involved. This was not a physical coercion, writes the Sifsei Chaim citing the Maharal, but the coercion experienced from overwhelming clarity and certitude of Hashem’s existence which we witnessed through all the miracles leading to our redemption from Egypt. How could Bnei Yisroel refuse to accept the Torah.
In contrast, throughout the Purim narrative Hashem’s presence is concealed. The Purim miracle was spread over a nine year period. One would most likely attribute the events and our salvation to the normal intrigue of royal politics. But when we recognize that Hashem was choreographing all these events, and we realize how much Hashem loves us, how unaware we were of that love, we now want to reciprocate it and we accept the Torah anew, now through overwhelming love, not through overwhelming facts. Keymu vekiblu, they established and accepted again what they had previously accepted at Sinai, but now with a deeper love.
The main message of Purim is that Hashem loves us and watches over us. He never leaves us wherever we may be in the world. With this feeling, with the sense of Hashem’s closeness, we can understand that our tefillot on this day are extremely powerful. We are motivated to observe our mitzvoth with passion and gratitude. This is the source of our joy, of accepting the Torah anew. It is this simchah that was missing on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the actualization of Hashem’s love from above; our celebration of Purim is the manifestation of our love from below.
This reversal is evident in the rituals of these special days. For Yom Kippur, we eat and drink before the holiday, and we fast on Yom Kippur. For Purim, we fast the day before Purim and eat and drink on Purim. But the eating and drinking are merely external manifestations of the joy and love we feel internally.
On Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, the Yomim Tovim and Yom Kippur, the sanctity of the day is expressed in the Kedushah of Mussaf, as the Nusach Sefard recites “Kesser… The angels crown You…” As Rabbi Wolfson zt”l explains, on all these holidays, we crown Hashem on high, but on Purim, a regular weekday, we take the mundane, the food and drink, and invest them with sanctity. The Shechinah descends and invests the very mundane with holiness. That is the great joy of the day.
But the greater joy is sharing your bounty with others. That is the reasoning behind Rambam’s ruling that one should spend more money on the mitzvah of gifts to the poor than on mishloach manot and on the festive meal. To put it another way, writes the Sichot Eliyahu, on Yom Kippur we emulate the angels; we wear white and neither eat nor drink. In contrast, on Purim, we emulate Hashem by providing for others. In other words, it is not about you being happy, but about making the day happy for others, writes Rabbi Rothberg. That is the actual avodah/service of the day, through giving, teaches us Rabbi Biederman.
And herein lies the constant battle that we as humans face. We are comprised of a body and a soul/intellect. The body is interested only in itself, as are all living things. But the soul want to emulate Hashem and be a giver. When the body and the soul are aligned in this spirit of giving, in the desire to emulate Hashem, that brings the greatest joy, writes the Sichot Eliyahu..
Mordechai Hatzadik proclaimed the day to be a day of feasting. As such, the seudah/festive meal has a place of importance on Purim. What is the purpose of this feast? Shir Hashirim Rabba tells us that when Shlomo Hamelech realized Hashem had gifted him with all the knowledge, as he had requested, Shlomo made a great feast to celebrate. It is from Shlomo’s feast that we celebrate making a siyum with a festive meal. The Shem Mishmuel suggests that by incorporating a seudah into our learning or into our mitzvah, we are anchoring the spiritual aspect of our lives into the physical aspect. We are absorbing and concretizing the emotional and intellectual light of the day into our physical existence. That may be why we traditionally enjoy the meal at the end of the day, so that we can internalize all the mitzvoth of Purim, the light of the Megillah, and of mishloach manot, and of matanot laevyonim, adds Rabbi Wolfson.
This seudah takes on even greater significance when we realize it is a rectification for our enjoyment of the festivities of Achashverosh. That reveling in physical enjoyment is very much an Amalek trait, one he inherited from his grandfather Esau. Esau, coming in from the hunt to see Yaakov Avinu preparing a lentil stew, was so overcome with desire for food that he just wanted that red stuff to be poured into him. He couldn’t even call the food by a name, just some red stuff, red, the color of passion. And for this Esau sold the birthright. When we did more than just partake of the food and drink of Achashverosh’s table, when we thoroughly enjoyed it, we exhibited Amalekite tendencies.
Enjoyment of food can be gluttony or sacred, writes Rabbi Dovid Cohen. When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the line between the two became blurred. On Purim, when we join a seudah, listen to some divrei Torah, bring others into our circle of love of Bnei Yisroel, we are repairing the gluttonous partying of Achashverosh’s feast and converting it into a sacred, elevated meal.
Actually, the feasts in the Purim narrative are called mishteh, a term implying drinking, highlighting the debauchery and negative aspects of those feasts. How much different are our seudot, filled with praise for Hakodosh Boruch Hu. We transform the catalysts for our destruction into instruments of gratitude for our salvation, writes Rabbi Bernstein.
The Shvilei Pinchas gives us a very homiletic interpretation of the two non Biblical holidays. Purim and Chanukah, that closely connect Bnei Yisroel with the Beit Hamikdosh. In this analogy, the “head” refers to Hakodosh Boruch Hu while the “Body” symbolizes Bnei Yisroel. No body can exist once it is severed from the head. What connects a head to a body? It is the neck, and within the neck are the two structures that enable the connection, the esophagus and the trachea. The esophagus provides the food for the body’s existence while the trachea provides the breath.
Bnei Yisroel uses these pathways to connect to Hashem. We elevate our food in seudot mitzvah, and we elevate our breath through prayer and Torah study. Chanukah is the holiday for raising our voices to thank and to praise Hakodosh Boruch Hu. We are using the trachea. Purim is the holiday we use feasting and joy to connect to Hashem, using the esophagus.
This is the essence of the battle between Mordechai Hatzadik and Haman. Haman wanted to sever the connection between Mordechai Hatzadik and Hashem, to hang Mordechai Hatzadik by the neck. However, the tale turned upside down with Haman being hung by the neck and losing his life. This was what Achashverosh himself alluded to when he agreed to give Esther Hamalkah up to half the kingdom, but not the Beit Hamikdosh, not the “neck” that would connect Bnei Yisroel to Hashem.
The Shvilei Pinchas continues even more graphically. The trachea and the esophagus, the two “pipes” in the neck, are shaped like the letter vov [ו]. At the beginning of the Megillah and almost throughout, Achashverosh is written with two vov‘s, אחשורוש. However, after Bnei Yisroel returned to Hashem and re accepted the Torah, the Megillah says “קימו וקבלו, They established and accepted…” Bnei Yisroel took back those pipes of connection, the two “vov”s to Hashem as they celebrated with their joyous voices and festive meal. At the end of the Megillah, the king’s name is written without those two “vov“s; it is now אחשרש.
When the mortal king Achashverosh asks Esther Hamalkah, “What is your request and it will be done,” Achashverosh is unwittingly relaying the King’s message to Esther Hamalkah and to Bnei Yisroel. On Purim, Hashem tells us we can make our requests to Him and He will fulfill them.
Purim represents our re connection to Hashem on every level, from recommitting to the Torah through love, to emulating His love and care for each of us, to thanking Him both through the mundane food we eat and through our heightened prayers and gratitude.
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